LOS ANGELES PLAYS ITSELF

No place delights in retelling its own tale quite like the city of angels. Now, a wave of chefs, hoteliers, and entrepreneurs is remixing the classics to usher in a new golden age.

- Jason Sheeler.

The energy is shifting. Can you feel it?" It is a cloudy Sunday afternoon in Highland Park. A perfect day to hear about ghosts.

This neighbourhood in northeast LA is known for its early-1900s Arts and Crafts homes and cashew-milk lattes. It fell into disrepair and gang violence by the '90s, but in the last 20 years, has been rediscovered and revitalised by the creative class. People like Danielle Thomsen, who's telling me about the ghosts in the store.

A shoebox diorama of a shop, Pattyes Closet II is filled with vintage Levi's, draggy caftans, old photos, terrifying dolls, and costume jewellery. It is around the corner from Rosie Bunny Bean (a pet supply shop), a vegan soft-serve joint, the wonderful Taiwanese restaurant Joy, at least four coffee shops, and a delightfully bizarre marionette theatre. A Corvette vrooms past, blaring a Bruce Hornsby song.

I spot paintings of young women from LA's early days, not long after 44 settlers founded it in 1781. They're in witchy Stevie Nicks lace. "Sometimes I come in and their eyes are closed," she says. The eyes on the canvas? "Oh, everything in here is haunted," she says. "It's Los Angeles. There are spirits everywhere. That's why you have to believe in something.

Otherwise, you're untethered, and they take you away." She pauses, "Did you just show up here, or were you invited?"

ANGELENOS BELIEVE IN their town above all else. But today finds LA in flux. The city vaulted to the sixth most expensive in the world, while the unhoused population increased 9 per cent last year. The entertainment industry just climbed out of a paralysing writer's strike.